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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28744851">The Only Living Boy in New York</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermichael/pseuds/sistermichael'>sistermichael</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The One Where the Crew Has a Betting Pool [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>What We Do in the Shadows (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Catholic Guilt, Clairvoyance, Fun architectural facts about Staten Island, Hurricanes, M/M, Metaphysics (questionable), POV Outsider, Post-Season/Series 02, Rubber chicken misuse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 14:06:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,883</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28744851</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermichael/pseuds/sistermichael</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>OSHA’s heart palpitations continue as our heroes try to outrun a hurricane, break a number of National Park Service ordinances, and get a little too metaphysical for comfort.</p><p>Mysteries are solved and bagels are consumed in the final installment in <i>The One Where the Crew Has a Betting Pool.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Guillermo de la Cruz/Camera Two, Guillermo de la Cruz/Nandor the Relentless, Guillermo de la Cruz/Nandor the Relentless/Camera Two, Nandor the Relentless/Camera Two (What We Do in the Shadows TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The One Where the Crew Has a Betting Pool [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Only Living Boy in New York</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A billion thank-yous to everyone who’s beta-read, cheerleaded, commented on, kudosed, and read this odyssey. In particular, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/freydient">Freydient</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppy_plant">Poppy_plant</a>, and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CadetDru">CadetDru</a> have been a brilliant beta-reading legion. All mistakes remain my own. I can be found on tumblr @sistersasquatch.</p><p>The title is from Simon &amp; Garfunkel’s song of the same name (Kishi Bashi also has an excellent cover of it). </p><p>See endnotes for spoilery references etc.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> “You can travel through the ether?” Cecil asks, baffled. Nandor’s risen to his feet and is looking at Cecil expectantly and more than a little gleefully.</p><p>Nandor shrugs. “It has all kinds of nifty properties. It’s a natural exfoliant and is good on toast, too.” He holds out his hands for Cecil.</p><p>Cecil sighs and briefly considers just getting under the covers of Guillermo’s bed and pretending none of this is happening. “Okay. Let’s do it.” He gets up rather unsteadily.  </p><p>“Where are we going?”</p><p>“The fucking bridge. Hopefully Ana will meet us there with the cavalry.” Cecil leans back against Nandor, who wraps his arm around Cecil as if to Heimlich him and says, very solemly “buckle up, buttercup." Cecil honestly doesn’t have a godforsaken clue where he learned that and quite frankly doesn’t want to know.</p><p>*</p><p>Ether travel, it transpires, <em>sucks. </em>Cecil’s capacity for surprise is pretty much exhausted at this point, but that doesn’t stop it from sucking. It’s like he’s simultaneously been hit with a stomach virus and a hangover and a bus—one of the extra-long ones, at that.</p><p>They’re not quite aiming for the fucking bridge, actually, but rather the site of several of the incredibly boring school field trips of Cecil’s youth. (However, on one such memorable excursion in 2008, Cecil got to hold hands with a boy called Phillip, so it clearly wasn’t all bad). Fort Wadsworth squats uncomfortably beneath the thirteen gleaming, thundering lanes of the Fucking Bridge, a stained collection of sandstone batteries that have ostensibly been defending New York City since 1806, though now it’s mostly an assortment of Coast Guard desk jockeys and a National Recreation Area in which people walk their dogs and take photos of the distant, smudgy Manhattan skyline. He tells Nandor to aim for an overlook he vaguely remembers from the time in 5<sup>th</sup> grade that Jorge Chavez Castillo threw up his whole lunch into the bushes. It’s not quite where he saw the two figures brawling in Lilith’s fireplace, but in the interest of not landing directly in the path of a wooden stake, it seems prudent to show up a safe distance away.</p><p>Cecil had vaguely hoped that they would burst onto the scene like a couple of ill-matched avenging angels, but what actually happens is that Nandor drops him in a bush. And that bush is naturally in its own very deep puddle. Cecil glowers as he squelches to his feet, but his attention is quickly diverted to Nandor staring up at the clouds with undisguised trepidation. To be fair, if Cecil’s doom were lurking somewhere behind them, he’d be a bit angsty as well.</p><p> “How long do you have?” he asks Nandor above the wind, squinting up at the sky as well. He’s rewarded with a particularly fat flurry of raindrops in his eyes.</p><p>Nandor shrugs. “It’s really dark out!” he yells. “These situations are…slippery.” He eyes Cecil calculatingly through the rain, which is now being kind enough to go sideways. “What do you think?”</p><p>Cecil considers. “It’s technically close to sunrise, but it won’t get too light out for a while, I think, and the sun shouldn’t break through. I just don’t know how long the storm will last.” His brain is doing that photography thing where it's casually calculating the exposure triangle without his full consent. It’s like a perverse math problem: if you're going to set the aperture to f/8 and the ISO to 400, at what shutter speed will the vampire you just sort-of had sex with get fried to a crisp? He has a light meter at home, a product of a brief flirtation with film photography before he realized it was too expensive and pretentious for any but the most devoted hipsters. He wonders if he could teach Nandor to use it.</p><p>Nandor looks at him uneasily, but Cecil’s already at the railing, looking out over the scene before him. To his right, the fucking bridge looms. He forgets how <em>massive </em>it is sometimes. (Not massive enough to justify the $17 toll just to drive across the damn thing, but still). The bridge is nearly empty now; beyond, the narrows are choppy and Brooklyn is reduced to occasional hazy glimpses through the clouds and rain. As an adult who finds himself contractually-obligated to yo-yo between Brooklyn and Staten Island via the Fucking Bridge multiple times a day (slash-night), Cecil has watched the fort recede and draw closer in a seemingly-unending cycle. That he's a grown-up now and has a job that he (usually) likes and friends and everything isn't lost on him, but something about the push and pull of such a visceral reminder of his childhood sometimes makes him a little maudlin. Of course, that could also be Ana’s reprehensible driving combined with the fact that his probable lactose intolerance doesn't stop him from putting cream cheese on his bagels.</p><p>Directly in front of Cecil and Nandor is the fort itself. It was built in different stages, the buildings all slung out over the field below them. The big one right on the Narrows is called Battery Weed, a fact that Cecil will never forget because the response of a bunch of the 13-year-olds to something called <em>Battery Weed </em>is astonishing in its scope, scale, and crudeness. The battery is a curved three-story fort made of stone with dozens of gun emplacements in it like orderly Swiss cheese. Each emplacement is a small room with an arched ceiling in which one could conceivably put a cannon with which to defend Staten Island against the depredations of hipster beards and Doc Martens. The result is that the fort is more hole than stone, and all of those holes seem to be staring Cecil right in the face. </p><p>“That one,” Cecil says to Nandor, shutting his eyes to try and picture the scene that sprung from Lilith’s fireplace. They have a minor argument about the best way down to the fort until Nandor settles it by picking up Cecil bodily and flying him to ground level with much grumbling from both of them. There’s a padlock on the gate, but Nandor pulls it apart like string cheese and they’re into the battery, standing on the parade ground with the walls looming around them. It’s really hard to see through the rain. Cecil doesn’t fancy their chances, but he drags Nandor across the grass and picks an emplacement at random to duck into.</p><p>“How do you feel?” Nandor whispers once they’re out of the rain. Master of observation that he is, he’s evidently picked up on the fact that Cecil’s leaning against the wall and breathing heavily.</p><p>“Like someone just drained my blood,” Cecil whispers back. He sticks his head briefly out into the rain and does some mental math. “Okay. Sixty-ish gun emplacements, spread over three floors connected by four towers.”</p><p>“And you’re sure…”</p><p>“Dead certain,” said Cecil, dragging himself up to standing again. “They’re here somewhere.”</p><p>“How do you know they haven’t come and gone already?”</p><p>“Because the last time…” He takes a breath, winded. “Because it seems that the visions I see are things that I will see through my own eyes.”</p><p>As if in response to this revelation, there’s a horrible, high-pitched scream from the parade ground. Nandor grabs Cecil by the back of the head and totally decks him.</p><p>“Thanks,” Cecil gasps only a little sarcastically from the extremely dirty floor.</p><p>“I was helping,” hisses Nandor amid the screams resounding off the walls. There are more of them now, shrill and panicked. He puts out a hand to make Cecil stay, then rises to his feet and takes a few steps outside to investigate. And then he…coos?  </p><p><em>“Awwwww,</em>” he says holding out a hand and clucking. A goat wanders into Cecil’s line of sight and headbutts Nandor gently.</p><p>“God, you are <em>such</em> a horse girl,” Cecil gasps, hauling himself up to a seated position and sneezing from all the dust.</p><p>“It’s an omen!” says Nandor triumphantly as a second goat trots over to join them.</p><p>“It’s not an omen, they live here and we didn’t close the gate behind us,” sighs Cecil.</p><p>“They live here?”</p><p>“They cut the grass.”</p><p>“They cut the…wait, how do you…?”</p><p>“Field trips, remember?”</p><p>The goats start screaming again. It’s really quite unsettling, although Cecil can’t blame them for being angsty over being left outside in a hurricane. He gets to his feet and sticks his head into the next emplacement as Nandor begins to usher the entire herd into the fort like some deranged Pied Piper for goats.  </p><p>And then Cecil stops, removes his head from the emplacement, and sticks it back in in the hope that he’s not seeing what he’s actually seeing.</p><p> “Nandor,” he grits out. “Nandor, we’ve gotten pretty metaphysical over the last, uh, ten hours, wouldn’t you say?”</p><p>Nandor looks at him uncomprehendingly. He has a particularly cute goat in his arms. “…sure.”</p><p>Cecil beckons him over, grabs the back of his head, and dunks him past the boundary of the emplacement as if subjecting him to a particularly weird baptism. An extra-angsty goat screams, and Nandor nearly does too.</p><p>“That’s—” he splutters as Cecil withdraws his hand and lets Nandor surface.</p><p>“The fancy room in your house.”</p><p>“And I’m…?”</p><p>“Making out with Guillermo on the couch? It would appear so.”</p><p>Nandor cocks his head. “Huh.” He brushes fingertips against his lips, seemingly unconsciously. “That’s…odd.”</p><p>Cecil puts a hand on the wall, the pieces clunking unpleasantly into place in his head. “Uh…this one may be my fault.”</p><p>Nandor abruptly drops his hand from his face and treats Cecil to a truly magnificent eye roll. “Video man, I fail to see how—”</p><p>“My phone was in my pocket when Vladislav tried to shove me into the circle. Which was kind of your fault, FYI.”</p><p>“…and?”</p><p>“Well, there was something on my phone.”</p><p>“The llama sticker? That doesn’t seem very magical. Sparkly, yes. Magical, not really.”</p><p>Cecil takes a moment to close his eyes and gently but firmly bash his head against the wall. “Not physically. Digitally. It’s…well… a file. A spreadsheet, in fact. And it appears that someone—or, some<em>thing, </em>I have no fucking clue—has taken it and run with it.” He cracks one eye and looks at Nandor.</p><p>“You seriously need to eat something,” says Nandor, looking at the goats appraisingly.  </p><p>“No, no, listen.” Maybe he’s talking total gibberish, or maybe he’s suddenly been divinely inspired (it’s a fine line anyway), but Cecil has never been more certain of anything in his life. “Don’t get up on your high horse, just let me explain. Since January, the documentary crew has been running a betting pool about…well, a lot of things. Mostly regarding you and Guillermo, but it sort of, uh...blossomed out into other stuff too. It was all on a spreadsheet, all the possibilities and results and scoring and everything. It got pretty wild, after a certain point. I had a local copy of it all on my phone and, well…” He looks around at all the emplacements around him. “When whatever you summoned burst out of the circle, I think it ran slap-bang into the betting pool and...uh...I think we’ve got a lot of probability-based pocket universes on our hands.”</p><p>Nandor stares uncomprehendingly. </p><p>“You guys invented math, don’t give me that shit,” grouses Cecil.</p><p>“What, the entire Middle East?”</p><p>“Shut up, I’m suffering from blood loss.” Cecil tries to focus. “The best I can tell, our stupid betting pool gave whatever you summoned out of that salt circle a footing into creating an uncertain number of alternate universes—accidentally or on purpose, I don’t know. Maybe it was just confused.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“It’s potential outcomes. Rolls of the dice. Ways this could have gone right now, instead of this one. And since reality’s kind of wobbly right now, it seems like one of each of those potential outcomes is occupying a gun emplacement. Metaphysically, that is.” He looks up at the ceiling, feeling the weight of the possibilities.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Fuck if I know.”</p><p>Nandor looks at him funny.</p><p>“Don’t look at me like that,” Cecil grouses. “Do you think the hurricane could be connected?”</p><p>“To what?”</p><p>Cecil waves a hand. “All of this.” He shivers. “Me.”</p><p>“<em>Me?</em>” Nandor repeats, incredulous.</p><p><em>The universe is a tapestry, and you are but a particularly sassy thread</em>, says the version of Lilith’s voice that is apparently now going to live in Cecil’s head forever.</p><p>“You seriously think a major storm changed its course because of <em>you?</em> Sheesh, the balls on some people,” Nandor marvels.</p><p>“Shut up, I’m thinking.”</p><p>Nandor mercifully shuts up.</p><p>Cecil walks out the front of their emplacement.</p><p>“Wait, where are you going?”</p><p>“The thinking’s not working. That leaves the doing.” Cecil pulls out his phone and thumbs open the betting pool spreadsheet. “I’m operating on the assumption that Vladislav is just as in over his head as the rest of us. And, if what happened at the Théâtre des Vampires is any indication, when he’s in over his head, he flees. Guillermo followed him here, I’d assume. And then…” He gestures at the battery looming in front of them, each emplacement potentially containing an entire weird-ass world. “They ran into this. Or brought it with them when they left the house. I have no idea.” He sighs. “Which means we need a way to track them down and pull them back out, as tempted as I am to just leave them there.”</p><p>Cecil’s only wearing jeans and a t-shirt, so that leaves Nandor to—with much grumbling and hair-tossing—take off his cape and start ripping it up. Given that the cape would probably make the Antiques Roadshow guys spontaneously orgasm, Nandor’s probably justified in his horror.</p><p>“How much do we need?” Nandor asks, tying knots adeptly enough to earn him a Boy Scout badge. Some of his Scary Medieval Warlord stuff seems to be swimming back up to the surface again.</p><p>Cecil, not having experienced any universe but his own, does not know. “As much as you can, I guess.”</p><p>Nandor glowers, but gives his cape another rip. Cecil, for a whole lot of reasons, is glad that Nandor found the time to re-dress himself after the Salt Circle Incident.</p><p>Once Nandor’s braided a long, very fancy rope out of his cloak, Cecil ties it around his belt loops and gives it an experimental tug. It holds, more or less, although he fervently hopes they aren’t actually going to have to put a whole lot of torque on this thing. He’d already scanned the room for Vladislav on the first (very memorable) excursion into the laws of probability. He wasn’t in there, so Cecil mentally checks that emplacement off the list. </p><p>“Shall we?” he asks Nandor. Nandor inclines his head gravely, which is so funny-looking on a medieval vampire holding a rope made out of his own cape that Cecil feels a weird fondness that he doesn’t under any circumstances want to examine too closely.</p><p>Instead, he walks out of the casement onto the parade ground and stands there staring at all of them spread out before him.</p><p>“Okay,” he says slowly. “I’m going to do one at a time and come out in between each one, yeah? Process of elimination?”</p><p>Nandor nods and wraps the rope around his hand a few times, as if Cecil’s a particularly feisty dog he’s about to walk.</p><p>Cecil steps into the second emplacement.</p><p>“Fucking <em>McKenzie,</em>” he groans pretty much instantly. He does a quick perimeter scan while doing his best to avoid looking at the scene unfolding on the bed in the blue room. Mercifully, there’s no one else there.</p><p>“Seared into my retinas forever,” he grumps as he backs out of the emplacement. “Why does everyone think the blue room is for fornicating?”</p><p>“Because it <em>is </em>for fornicating,” says Nandor innocently.</p><p>Cecil facepalms, untangles himself from the cape-rope, and ducks into the next emplacement.</p><p>And the next, and the next, and the next. He’ll admit, sometimes it’s not great, but sometimes it’s hilarious. He’d never known Nandor could have such a capacity for interpretive dance, in any universe. And Guillermo, a few times, looks so blissfully happy and unburdened Cecil wonders if they just can’t make this particular world the one they all live in.</p><p>Unfortunately, it’s also exhausting.</p><p>“I can never look any of my coworkers in the face ever again,” pants Cecil, landing flat on his ass after a particularly weird universe. It is very, very squelchy.</p><p>“Are you—”</p><p>“Suffering from blood loss and scarred for life? Yes, as a matter of fact.” He pants for a few moments and wonders why there seems to be so much less oxygen out and about than usual. “This may also have some…uh…side effects.”</p><p>Some of those side effects have to do with the adult shenanigans happening in select universes and their effect on Cecil’s libido, but Nandor doesn’t need to know that.</p><p>They finish the first row of emplacements and its many permutations on Nandor’s sexual preferences. Cecil’s beginning to panic, very gently and just a little bit. He suspects the freaking-out thing would be much worse if he actually had enough blood left in his body to carry all the cortisol around. They go up the staircase (Cecil’s extremely funny “PIVOT!” reference goes right over Nandor’s head, and then he trips over the damn rope and nearly bashes his face on the wall) and Cecil begins ransacking the next row of emplacements.</p><p>It’s different up here. Most of the time thus far, Cecil’s been deposited somewhere in the Staten Island house, or maybe on the grounds. This isn’t the case here. There’s something ritual happening in Wallace’s hut, and a weird thing where Nadja and Ange the werewolf have a forbidden romance and rendezvous on top of the Empire State Building. (That one is kind of fun, actually, and Cecil emerges wearing a stupid-enough smile for Nandor to ask about it).</p><p>The sixth emplacement down is where things go haywire. Cecil doesn’t know how he knows—maybe Lilith’s witchiness rubbed off on him—but this is the one. Emerging into the yellowy darkness of a city night, he clutches the rope tightly in his hand, feeling overwhelmingly like he’s going to need to give it a panicked yank any second now.</p><p>It’s a cemetery. Not just any cemetery, though. Cecil’s not even from Manhattan and he knows instantly where they are; he wonders if Guillermo did too, before he got here. Old St. Patrick’s looms above them, severe and gothic; given the presence of a two-hundred-year-old Catholic church, Cecil’s pretty sure that he’s arrived at the scene of Guillermo’s guilt trip. And then he realizes with a dawning horror that this wasn’t on the spreadsheet: Cecil never sat down at the computer and mused on the circumstances surrounding Guillermo’s horrible night; he never opened up the Google Drive on the beach at Coney Island and typed in some preliminary thoughts. This means whatever came out of the circle got in somebody’s head, too. This is someone’s own private universe that has been seized upon and made manifest. He has no idea if any of this is real or not, but in the interest of not having an entire panic attack, he resolves to cover his ass first, ask questions later (if at all).</p><p>It’s a warm, clear night. The ever-present rumble of New York traffic is keeping the dead company; the horizon is fringed with light pollution. Cecil nudges open the gate with his hip and walks in. He’s rapidly running out of rope and ideas, but he isn’t standing around among the gravestones like an idiot for long before the door of the church is flung open and a figure bursts out.</p><p>It’s Guillermo. And he’s ever-so-slightly on fire.</p><p>“<em>Ohhhhhh,</em>” Cecil says softly, ducking behind a particularly tall headstone, because a whole lot of things are suddenly starting to make sense. However, he doesn’t particularly like the implications. He’s barely secreted himself behind the headstone of the erstwhile Temperance McNair when Vladislav bursts out of the church immediately behind Guillermo. Also on fire, which is slightly more understandable.</p><p>Guillermo, meanwhile, is having some other issues. Namely, the-being-on-fire thing, but also presumably the accompanying religious crisis thing. Cecil loiters, heart in his mouth: he’s just come to realize that he doesn’t know which Guillermo he’s looking at here, or for that matter which reality. Is this the Guillermo that stumbled into the emplacement from the outside, or is this a flashback? Or is this, like the other things Cecil’s dipped into, a strange blossom of suggestibility?</p><p>He doesn’t like the implications of any of it, come to think of it.</p><p>Guillermo’s managed to put himself out; smoking faintly, he sits down on the steps at the front of the church. He’s frighteningly quiet, head in his hands. Cecil can’t even hear him breathing.</p><p>Cecil was a nerdy teen that grew into a nerdy adult; he knows the perils of inserting oneself into universes other than one’s own. In theory, the past version of himself is waiting in Bensonhurst to dominate the shit out of Guillermo, anyway. Assuming that this universe’s version of Cecil has all that stuff that on lock, Cecil sinks further into the shadows and works his way around the back of the church.</p><p>Or, rather, he tries to. He trips over something instead—something very much alive, which he knows because that thing drops a number of f-bombs in response to current events.</p><p>“What’s going on?” hisses Guillermo—a second, very waterlogged Guillermo who's now clutching his side and wincing. “That’s…that’s <em>me.</em>” He points at the church and squints at Cecil in the dark. “Are you…which<em> you</em> are you, exactly?”</p><p>“The one who just got his blood drunk in Staten Island,” whispers Cecil, his eyes not leaving the Guillermo sitting despondent on the church steps. “So is this that thing you wouldn’t tell me about? You caught fire in a church?”</p><p>“The theological implications are quite immense,” says Vladislav conversationally from Guillermo’s other side. Squatting down causes his sparkly bondage wizard outfit to ride up in ways so awful that Cecil must have done something horrific in a previous life to deserve to see them. “Vampire hunter catches fire in church? Stop the presses, shit just got very interesting.”</p><p>Cecil and Guillermo hush him as one. Guillermo’s getting the same look in his eyes that Cecil saw when Guillermo realized Vlad was about to chuck Cecil directly into the maw of a vengeful deity. Er, what was possibly a vengeful deity. Of some sort. The details are still a little fuzzy.</p><p>As they watch, the second Vladislav emerges from among the gravestones and sits down next to Guillermo on the church steps, also smoking gently. He says something, too low to make out, but Cecil would bet his camera—his <em>nice </em>camera, even--that this is the origin of the harebrained scheme that landed them all in this mess in the first place.</p><p>“What’s gong on?” hisses the Guillermo next to Cecil.</p><p>“I’ll explain later,” Cecil mutters. “Let’s get out of here first.” He wiggles the rope demonstratively. “Nandor’s on the end waiting to drag us all out.”</p><p>“See, simple-minded, all of them,” purrs Vladislav to Guillermo. It’s not got much oomph behind it; being an asshole seems like it’s just a casual reflex for Vlad. “He should have both our necks now, but he won’t. He’s far too weak. He’s jeopardized his own safety for ours, because he really does know, deep down, that he’s not anywhere near to what we are.”</p><p>Cecil doesn’t even see Guillermo move, it happens that fast: one second they’re all hunkering companionably behind some very old gravestones, and the next, Vladislav is shrieking in a surprisingly high-pitched voice while Guillermo tries to beat the shit out of him. Cecil recognizes several of Ana’s trademark moves. He says some words that aren’t really suitable for broadcast and lunges after the two of them.</p><p>“Behave!” he snaps, grabbing them and giving the rope a wrench. He’s got Vladislav in a headlock and Guillermo by the back of his sweater; Guillermo might also have a surreptitious stake pressed to Vlad’s derriere. Cecil’s choosing to ignore it for the moment.</p><p>The feeling of extraction is definitely weirder when one has other people in tow. He feels tension on the rope and frantically hopes it doesn’t tear and pop back out into their own universe. Cecil flings the other two out ahead of them; he vaguely hears Nandor making assorted noises of indignation, but he’s got bigger problems: namely, that the storm’s kicked up again, and Guillermo and Vladislav are full-out brawling on the parade ground in the thrashing rain, the Fucking Bridge looming out of the fog behind them.</p><p>Well, that answers <em>that</em> question. Cecil really should get Lilith a wine-of-the-month subscription and be done with it. He and Nandor look helplessly at each other.</p><p>“I guess we should…?” Nandor mimes pulling two people apart, but it’s clear his heart isn’t in it.</p><p>Cecil sighs and shrugs. “I mean, we could always let them just…” He mimes two people repeatedly bashing into each other.</p><p>They’re saved the conundrum by the sound of tires squealing to a halt outside the fortress walls; Cecil has never been so glad for Ana’s appalling driving in all his days.</p><p>He hangs out the window of the tower and watches the entire documentary crew and the Staten Island Werewolf Support Group spill into the sodden parade ground in the pouring rain. Any other time he’d have a word with Ana about the appalling passenger-to-seatbelt ratio, but now he’s just deliriously happy.</p><p>Suddenly, everything wobbles like Jell-O: one second he’s looking at Ana’s neon pink anorak and the next it’s like he skipped a step going downstairs and has temporarily forgotten who and where he is.</p><p>“Cecil!” Ana yells and points to something at the top of the parapet.   </p><p>“Shit!” hisses Cecil, but Nandor’s beat him to it, taking the stairs three at a time. Cecil wheezes after him; he hears Ana clattering up the steps markedly faster. They burst out onto the parapet. The wind is still whipping and Vladislav is once again flashing everyone within a ten-meter radius as his sparkly bondage wizard getup flaps about. Some of us assassin friends have arrived too and are studiously avoiding looking at Vladislav from the waist down.</p><p>“Broseph!” yells a familiar voice over the wind. Cecil leans over the other side of the fort—what he suspects is the entire New Jersey Mermen’s Crossfit Association is serenely treading water in Gravesend Bay. It can’t be good for them, given all the shit that floats around in there, but Cecil supposes the immunity is probably built-in. “We came as soon as we could!”</p><p>“How’s the weather looking?” yells Cecil, figuring that Sherman has a vested interest in flooding.</p><p>“No bueno!” yells Sherman. “Bad flooding everywhere. But clearing soon, I think.”</p><p>But now Cecil’s got problems beyond the meterological, namely those of a threats-to-life-and-limb nature: more vampire assassins are batting out of nowhere, hissing and snarling as they land on the parapet. Guillermo draws his stakes and Ana starts getting into ass-kicking position, but they’re clearly outnumbered. Cecil flattens himself against the turret and fervently hopes that anyone on the bridge right now just thinks this is some sort of weird hurricane-only Shakespeare performance.</p><p>It turns out, however, that it’s not the bridge from whence the problem will come.</p><p>“It’s the fuzz!” Sherman yells before vanishing beneath the surface of the water.</p><p>Honestly, it’s a fucking miracle they’ve lasted this long trespassing on federal property without The Man getting wind of it. The cops are entering the parade ground via an inflatable raft, but the water isn’t deep enough to paddle properly and one of them’s had to get out and tow it with his comrades still sitting uselessly inside. Everyone on the roof makes eye contact, calls a temporary truce, and sidles behind the nearest available obstruction.</p><p>“Laszlo and Nadja are intercepting,” whispers Vladislav from where he and Nandor are crouched behind a cannon. Sure enough, Laszlo and Nadja—who must’ve piled into the van with the crew and the werewolves—have gone out to meet them and the boat’s lifejacket-clad occupants are currently staring dreamily at them. An oar slides out of its oarlock into the water and no one goes to rescue it.</p><p>“What’s going on here?” Guillermo hisses at Cecil and Ana. The three of them have flattened themselves against the backside of a small lighthouse and are watching the assassins--all of them are crouched behind the turret like a game of Sardines--nervously. </p><p>“You <em>geniuses </em>unleashed something distinctly not-good from the middle of the circle…and I think it’s tangled with…well…” Cecil stalls out. He looks at Ana helplessly. She, blessedly, catches on immediately.</p><p>“We had a betting pool,” says Ana grimly. “About whether you and Nandor would get together. And a whole bunch of other stuff too, because the crew is, as a general rule, absolutely feral. So…y’know…preferences, and such. It was on a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet was on Cecil’s phone, which was in its pocket, and whatever deity came out of that circle may have duckling-imprinted…”</p><p>“You’re saying that the divine got confused by the multiplicity of universes suggested by a highly-inappropriate betting pool and that’s how the cosmos is currently ordered?”</p><p>“That’s an oversimplification!” Cecil protests.</p><p>Ana steps on his foot. Hard. “What Cecil means is that we have no fucking clue. I mean, we have a better fucking clue now about what you’re into, but that’s neither here nor there.”</p><p>“Wait, you hid the existence of an entire, months-long betting pool about my sex life—” Guillermo splutters. Cecil tries to edge away, which isn’t so easy when you’re hiding behind a tiny lighthouse.</p><p>“Hey, hey, at the time we didn’t know whether you even had a sex life! And I’ve been trying to get Cecil to recuse himself on the basis of it practically being insider trading.”</p><p>“…was that one of the things people were betting on?” Guillermo sounds near-hysterical.</p><p>“One of many, I assure you. For Christ’s sake, one of the categories was whether Nandor wears underwear and if so, what kind.”</p><p>Guillermo opens his mouth to speak, but Cecil frantically waves him off. “Nope, nope, I don’t actually want to know.”</p><p>“He bet on ‘commando,’ for the record,” Ana informs Guillermo. Cecil contemplates shoving her off the parapet.</p><p>“Would you cut it out!” Vladislav hisses from behind a cannon. “Some of us are trying to evade capture here!”</p><p>“I think you’ve got a bigger problem coming, friend-o,” says Ana, pointing at the sky. “Storm’s rolling off.”</p><p>“Shitballs!” squawks Vladislav, grabbing Nandor by the sleeve. Every single assassin looks up, gulps audibly, and runs for the stairs. Cecil hopes the werewolves and the crew can clean this one up, because he’s a bit stuck at the moment. Judging by the sounds that erupt from the parade ground below, they're only too happy to do so. </p><p>“Wait, isn’t this what you wanted?” protests Nandor. “Me, getting fried to a crisp?”</p><p>“That was when I thought you’d murdered the Baron, <em>duh,</em>” said Vladislav. “Then I realized it was your tasty little familiar…”</p><p>Guillermo edges behind Cecil.</p><p>“Well, you can’t fry <em>him</em> to a crisp,” hisses Nandor. “That’s not how he works.”</p><p>Cecil’s not 100% on that anymore, but Nandor doesn’t need to know that.</p><p>Vladislav rolls his eyes. “It’s not my fault he’s got that weird Catholic guilt-martyr thing going for him. He pretty much jumped at the chance to sacrifice something. Like it would make him feel better, or whatever.”</p><p>Cecil had, in all the kerfuffle, minorly forgotten that Vladislav had tried to feed him into the divine jaws of the universe mere hours before--with Guillermo and Nandor’s accidental complicity. “Wait—” he protests, since this does seem rather important.</p><p>“<em>Inside,</em>” hisses Vlad. <em>“Now.</em>” Cecil squints up at the sky. f/8, ISO 400, and 1/125, if he had to guess. He mentally files that away as they all clatter down the tower stairs. Nandor totally eats shit at one point, and Cecil totally laughs at him a little bit.</p><p>They duck into the first available emplacement. As luck would have it, it’s the pocket universe where Nandor is spanking Laszlo rather hard with a rubber chicken in the fancy room.</p><p>“Gross,” said Vladislav, staring unblinking. Nandor growls and covers Vladislav’s eyes. The rubber chicken squeals in solidarity as it impacts alternate-universe-Nandor’s tuchis. </p><p>“That would be McKenzie,” Ana sighs. “I worry about that child, I really do.” She turns to Vladislav. “So are you actually evil, or merely a confused opportunist?”</p><p>“Confused opportunist,” says Guillermo dourly, shooting Vladislav a withering look.</p><p>“Uh, you’ve been a few sandwiches short of a picnic yourself lately, friend,” Ana warns him. “Fuck around and find out, why don’t you?”</p><p>Nandor, meanwhile, is trying to hide behind Cecil. It does not work.</p><p>“And <em>you!” </em>snaps Ana, rounding on Nandor. “I don’t really know which one of you is grand marshal of the dumbass parade, but you’re a strong contender. Was it you that told Vladislav about Guillermo and Cecil?”</p><p>Nandor holds up his hands, appalled. “I would <em>never,</em>” he hisses, scandalized.</p><p>They all look at Vladislav. He shrugs. “I am well-versed in the ways of the heart. And the pants. Also Guillermo prays out loud when he’s alone in a church.”</p><p>Ana facepalms. Cecil has a lot of questions, but he figures he can save them for later.</p><p>“Can we put…er, can we put God back now?” asks Guillermo quietly in the very awkward silence that follows.</p><p>Ana sighs. “Yes, you may.”</p><p>Vladislav rolls his eyes and procures an economy-size canister of salt from god-knows-where (his sparkly bondage wizard costume is VERY tight).</p><p>“Just so we’re clear—I’m not getting sacrificed this time, right? We’ve outgrown that little phase?” asks Cecil as Vladislav starts sprinkling salt on the carpet. The screams of the rubber chicken continue unabated. Guillermo has the grace to look embarrassed.</p><p>“Well, we have to sacrifice <em>something</em>,” said Vladislav patronizingly, as if this is an everyday occurrence for all of them. “Something important.”</p><p>Ana looks at Cecil’s back pocket. He can see the gears turning, which is always a little bit scary. “You can probably write it off as a work expense…”</p><p>Cecil sighs. “Tanya’s going to have a fit. And OSHA, probably. And maybe the divine, actually.” But he pulls his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and makes sure all of his photos are in the cloud. (They are. Storage being the perennial problem of the professional image-maker, he outgrew the space available on his phone a very long time ago).</p><p>“So we’re sacrificing…what, exactly?” asks Nandor. Vladislav’s finishing up the salt circle while humming something that sounds suspiciously like <em>Single Ladies</em><em>.</em></p><p>“The potential,” says Ana slowly. “We’re giving up on the possibilities that exist in the betting pool. We’re resigning ourselves to things as they are now, just one universe with one set of things happening. And Cecil’s phone, technically.”</p><p>“Grim,” said Vladislav approvingly.</p><p>Cecil hands Ana his phone. “You have better aim. And less of a conflict of interest.”</p><p>Vladislav finishes the salt circle with a flourish and Nandor starts some truly weird chanting. (Mercifully, no scatting, and he keeps his damn shirt on this time, confirming Cecil’s suspicion that its removal had been totally unnecessary last time).</p><p>The center of the circle roars to life, much as it had in the Staten Island house. And, like in the Staten Island house, Cecil’s brain is helpfully shielding him from witnessing the enormity of whatever is going down at the center of that circle.</p><p>Everyone looks at Ana expectantly.</p><p>“Uh, go fetch?” she says, chucking Cecil’s phone directly into the center of the circle. There’s a noise that sounds weirdly like Guillermo’s I’m-about-to-come groan (a tidbit that Cecil will take with him to his fucking grave) and Cecil’s phone vanishes. As does the salt circle, the room around them and, weirdly, Vladislav’s pants.</p><p>“Don’t want to know,” says Ana, turning away from Vladislav. They’re all standing in an unremarkable emplacement—just as remarkable, Cecil’s willing to bet, as the dozens around them. The light outside is watery and notably brighter. Out on the parade ground, it looks like the werewolves have tidily taken care of the vampire assassins; Cecil hears some giant splashes which suggest the floodwater has gotten deep enough for Sherman the Merman to put in an appearance as well. </p><p>“Well,” says Vladislav with a lot of authority for someone currently not wearing pants. “There we go, then.”</p><p>“Uh, cool,” says Ana, which is when they all realize that this has just gotten very awkward.</p><p>Cecil, still sticking his head out of the front of the emplacement, looks skyward and clears his throat. “I see blue. Looks like you two are stuck in here all day.” He swings back inside and tries not to look too smugly at Nandor and Vladislav. “Guillermo.”</p><p>Guillermo startles. “Yes?”</p><p>“You’re on babysitting duty this time. I think you all have a lot to talk about before the sun sets again.”</p><p>He looks over at Ana, who jingles the van keys invitingly.</p><p>“Yeah,” he sighs. “I’m ready.”</p><p>She pulls him into a hug and he very nearly sobs.</p><p>*</p><p>Cecil gets totally dogpiled the second they all get back to the office. Rick even kisses him on the temple mid-hug, which doesn’t have nearly the same swoon-inducing effect it used to but still does funny things to Cecil’s pulse.</p><p>The building’s on a generator, so there’s tea and a hot shower and an OSHA report to sign while being treated to one of Rosario’s scariest-ever death glares. Tanya forces him to eat a bagel and drink a bottle of water while they all watch the news, which seems to be mostly dedicated to the strange shit people have been using to raft down flooded streets and speculations as to how the entire meteorological field failed so stunningly at predicting this one. The universe isn’t wobbling anymore, which is kind of a relief. It’s also, Cecil is finding as he stares into the empty tub of scallion cream cheese, kind of a letdown, in an odd way.</p><p>“We didn’t trigger a universal existential crisis, did we?” asks Rick quietly under the pretense of putting cream cheese on Cecil’s second mandatory bagel. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the idea that the cosmos’ undoing was speculation over whether vampires can get STDs, buuuutttt…”</p><p>“Don’t know,” says Cecil, putting his head on Rick’s shoulder. “I’ve got…stuff to sort through.”</p><p>“And…” Rick sighs. “I don’t know if HR will let you stay on this project now that everyone knows about Guillermo.”</p><p>Cecil groans. HR is a terrifying Irish woman called Siobhan who definitely doesn’t truck with that sort of thing. Evidently the interrogation he got from his coworkers in the van on the way back over the Fucking Bridge wasn't punishment enough.</p><p>Ana slides into the sofa on the other side of Cecil. “I've made some enquiries as to what we can do with our buddy Vladislav.” She’s got one of those crinkly foil blankets around her shoulders, which Cecil suspects is Tanya’s doing.</p><p>“…and?”</p><p>“Got it sorted out. Ether travel is for short hops only, I’m afraid. The airports aren’t open again yet, but when they are, girlfriend is going to be on the first flight out of here. In the end, Vlady doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on, given he got in trouble for bringing a human to a creature-of-the-night-only party in New Zealand six years ago. He apparently didn’t count on anyone on this continent having access to the internet, let alone six different VPNs.” </p><p>Cecil puts his arm around her. “Thanks. And, for the record, I’m unbelievably sorry. For all of it.”</p><p>Ana fixes him with a look. “Cecil.”</p><p>“…yes?”</p><p>“They’re all incredibly dumb. Every single one of them.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Like, really, <em>really </em>dumb. <em>Spectacularly </em>dumb. They tried to summon the divine and you almost got fed to it—not because they’re malevolent, but because of their incurable brain scramblies and their weird religious complexes. I’m beginning to suspect that magic eats gray matter.”</p><p>Cecil sighs. “Whatever it is you're on about, just spit it out.”</p><p>“You can’t fix them. Not a single one of them will be growing a shred of common sense anytime soon.”</p><p>"And?”</p><p>“I just need to be sure that you know that and are okay with it.”</p><p>“…because?”  </p><p>She doesn’t dignify that one with an answer.</p><p>*</p><p>Eventually, Cecil bows to the inevitable and squelches (and occasionally wades) home. The water is receding, leaving behind sad trails of garbage in its wake. People are sitting on their stoops drinking and watching the world go by, the water rising off the pavement as steam in the growing heat of day. Some nuns in Flatbush have even dragged a grill out onto the sidewalk and are cheerily chucking hotdogs and burgers at sodden passersby. It’s not necessarily great that the cooking-meat smell is mingling with flood-garbage smell amid the ungodly humidity, but it’s the moments like these where Cecil is deliriously happy to be a New Yorker, even if he still maintains a very healthy fear of nuns.</p><p>He strips off at the door of his apartment and shoves his clothes into one of what he’s come to think of as Guillermo’s trash bags; as tempted as he is to achieve Worker’s Comp Bingo by getting trenchfoot, he thinks that Tanya would actually strangle him if he did. He stumbles into some underwear and a t-shirt, tips over onto the bed, and doesn’t wake up for a long time.</p><p>*</p><p>Dawn comes close and muggy the next morning, a sort of sad pink smudge on the horizon. Cecil sits outside on the fire escape with his next generation of doomed plants, pondering. The power still isn’t back and the gutters have been roaring all night. On further reflection, he could’ve slept at the office and at this very moment been eating a bagel in the AC, but he’s glad he’s come home.</p><p>Distantly, he hears the buzzer to his apartment door sound.</p><p>He resolves not to answer it, since Ana has a key and he doesn’t fancy seeing anyone else right now.</p><p>It buzzes again.</p><p>He resolves again.</p><p>It rings.</p><p>Suspicion dawns. Cecil looks down between his feet and the iron grating of the fire escape, and sure enough, there’s a bloodied vampire hunter standing next to the dumpster in the dawn, peering up at Cecil’s ass through several floors of fire escape.</p><p>“<em>What?</em>” he sighs.</p><p>“Can I come in?” asks Guillermo softly.</p><p>“For…”</p><p>“Talking purposes. Also maybe coffee purposes, because I’m kinda wiped.”</p><p>Cecil clambers back through the window and lets him in. Guillermo starts to strip, then looks at Cecil in confusion. It’s not clear anymore what the protocols are: it’s one thing to disrobe in front of the person you’re going to be having sex with after a curry and a shampoo (sometimes before and/or during the shampoo, at that), quite another to strip off your clothes when the person staring at you may or may not be your rather-recent ex-lover.</p><p>“Well, don’t drip all over the floor,” Cecil sighs, gesturing helplessly at the bag of bags hanging over the doorknob. He feels like he’s done more sighing in the last two years than he had in his life to date. Guillermo begins to strip off, looking for all the world like a dog who’s been caught chewing the furniture and has at least the decency to be ashamed of himself.</p><p>“Stop looking at me like you peed on the rug.”</p><p>That gets a laugh out of Guillermo, albeit a sort of strangled, fatalistic one that ends in what could conceivably be called a sob. Cecil retrieves a bathrobe for him and flings it in his general direction. Guillermo shrugs it on gratefully. </p><p>“We’re talking,” Cecil says flatly once Guillermo’s sitting on the sofa drinking instant coffee courtesy of the gas range.</p><p>“Right.” Guillermo fidgets. “Talking.”</p><p>“About…” Cecil prods.</p><p>Guillermo huffs out a breath. “Well, since you left me babysitting two angsty vampires in Battery Weed all day—”</p><p>“Which you 300% deserved, don’t try to bullshit me on that,” Cecil interjects.</p><p>“—we had a lot of time to talk. In which none of us could run away. Well, I guess I could have run away. Technically.”</p><p>Cecil rolls his eyes.</p><p>“Vladislav’s a hot mess, but he’s been around. He’s seen a lot of stuff.”</p><p>“…what kind of stuff?”</p><p>“Remember how I was feeling torn between two worlds?”</p><p>“Yeah, vividly.” It comes out snarkier than he intends.</p><p>“And remember how vampires—and for that matter, most of those in the supernatural world--aren’t exactly monogamous?”</p><p>It clunks into place. “You’re asking me if I’d be willing to share you.” That must’ve been an incredibly awkward conversation. Cecil feels quite vindicated in his decision to abandon them all to their various complexes for the day.</p><p>“Maybe.”</p><p>“Maybe?”</p><p>“Yes. Possibly.”</p><p>“Have you and Nandor slept together?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“No. Okay. Right. So is this a hypothetical conversation, or is this a ‘actually I need an answer right meow because Nandor is waiting in the boudoir and I can’t keep him long because you’re only supposed to keep a cock ring on for half an hour?’ conversation?”</p><p>“Half an HOUR?”</p><p>“Dude. Focus.”</p><p>Guillermo buries his face in his hands. “The witches cornered me.”</p><p>“Was there interpretive dance?”</p><p>“Um. A little. From them, not from me.”</p><p>“Liar.”</p><p>“No, they really did—”</p><p>“I mean interpretive dance from you, dumbass.” He pauses, realizing he probably should’ve been a little softer on that one.</p><p>“It was more like that scene in the <em>Sound of Music </em>where the nun stares out the window and sings and Maria looks mournful because she’s torn between returning to nunhood and marrying Captain von Trapp. Except with more sex incense, and the heavy implication that you’re a witch who can see the future and that if I hurt you, they’d skewer me on the antenna of the Empire State Building.”</p><p>“Okay.” Cecil takes a second to digest that. “So are you going to become a vampire, or are you going to continue to flit in and out of the lives of those you care about while struggling with an existential crisis the size of Jupiter?”</p><p>“I don’t know! I’m afraid that I’m too righteous for Nandor and too profane for you.”</p><p>“Too profane for me? Have you <em>met me</em>?” He considers.</p><p>And then, suddenly, Cecil decides. “Nandor needs an STD test, stat.”</p><p>Guillermo makes a face.</p><p>“Stop that! I will personally take him to CVS. You need not involve yourself.”</p><p>“I do want footage, though. Afterwards.”</p><p>Cecil laughs. “Of course. Footage is my specialty, believe it or not.”</p><p>Guillermo looks up sheepishly. “So is that a yes?”</p><p>Cecil pulls Guillermo close. “I think we can work it out.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The Fucking Bridge is officially known as the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. It connects Staten Island and Brooklyn and the toll is <i>obscene</i>. The goats at Ft. Wadsworth are real (as is Ft. Wadsworth, but I figured that was probably clear). Old St. Patrick’s, in the NoLiTa neighborhood of Manhattan, is also real, but I’ve taken some liberties with the position of the graveyard. “A boy called Phillip” is a slightly-obscure reference to Taskmaster, which I highly recommend watching.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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